


within our mangled hearts

by verbanski



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-15 14:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1307524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbanski/pseuds/verbanski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she keeps what she's allowed tucked away in a place no one will ever know because she will never tell</p>
            </blockquote>





	within our mangled hearts

**Author's Note:**

> ignore everything that stands in the way of nyssa and sara understanding vietnamese!!!! i wanted to try something out and this is what i ended up with. in order, the foreign phrases are roughly 'is something wrong,' 'don't,' and 'forgive me,' in context. it doesn't actually matter too much about the actual meanings, i tried to tie in as much contextual clues as i could to just get the message across.
> 
> anyways!!!!!!!!! i hope this worked.....hahaha

If there was supposed to be any form of relief nestled away into the small dinghy they’ve finally settled into during the dead of night, away from all the searching lights of the city, Sara sure as hell doesn’t find it.

In fact, if anything at all, she’s pretty sure she’d be more comfortable back where there are too many people to keep track of and too many things going off all at once to be singled out. Maybe it’s because she’s new to this but being engulfed by a proverbial sea of people seems damn safer than actually being out at sea. People provided an excellent distraction from Sara’s million thoughts right now and the calm waters offer nothing more than the low thrum of the engine that does little to drown the voice tugging in the back of her mind.

Sara is ninety-eight percent sure they’ve managed to royally fuck up everything and the remaining two percent hinge solely on whether or not she makes it out to sunrise alive.

The outlook looks bleak at best, starting from when they failed miserably, through the maze of darkened alleyways and rooftops in the city, and finally out to the small dock they’re pulling away from. There should be some solace in reaching their destination unscathed except that by now, she knows much better than to assume that this is the end of that.

 

When Sara comes to, the sun is shining brightly through the pale off-white curtains that shield her from dealing with the offending light directly. The smell of sea salt permeates the small cabin she awakes in, bringing back less than pleasant memories from a lifetime ago that she continues to keep hidden.

The light is too much but it reminds her that she is alive and it is morning and for now, it’s enough to assume that they are safe.

She blinks the last of her sleepy haze when she makes her way above deck, welcomes the warm breeze that flits through her hair and ruffles the shirt and shorts she didn’t change into herself. A brief moment passes where Sara indulges in the scene unfolding around her.

She allows herself to enjoy the stunningly clear water and the nearly cloudless sky that spans well beyond the horizon and the woman that’s fiddling with the mast, devoutly pretending to not notice Sara’s sudden presence. Despite what happened last night, Sara’s lips begin to curl upwards as she closes the distance between the two of them. The other woman is still trying to appear too busy to notice – stubborn is her wont, though, so Sara lets her have her way for a little while longer.

“O Captain, my Captain,” she starts, working at her sleeves to have something to do with her hands.

“You would do well to not start things that you are incapable of finishing.”

Sara has the decency to look offended then, because she truly doesn’t know how the rest of it goes beyond that. Regardless, the retort comes so naturally and falls from her lips before she has a chance to think twice about it. It earns her a hard glare but she keeps smiling because now those brown eyes are finally looking at her.

“Yeah, I get it, lay off, alright,” she concedes, “I’m not feeling too hot this morning.”

_“Có sao không?”_

Her hands abandon the rope she was toying with, coming up to hold Sara’s head instead like she’ll be able to siphon out the information she wants through some awkward osmosis. They’re warm and soft like the breeze outside against her cheeks and Sara gently grabs her wrists, rubs soothing circles there with her thumbs, to try to put a damper on the worry she just unearthed.

“I’m fine – promise – I just meant it was a rough night is all. I’m okay.”

Their hands finally drop from her face when she’s spent a sufficient amount of time searching for any signs of those words being a lie. Troublesome feelings properly assuaged, she flips her hand in Sara’s grasp to offer a small squeeze before retreating fully, back to the mast.

It would be brusque and cold if Sara didn’t notice the way her jaw unclenches, softening the hard edges of her face for the rest of the day, if she never stays too far away from Sara for the rest of the trip.

 

The boat lasts for a few more days before they reach some obscure shore with a quaint village that sits along the water.

It looks like something straight out of a swanky vacation magazine that should be swamped with tourists paying much too much for bottles of water and everything else they could possibly need. Instead, there are only locals going about their business, not noticing them even though they look completely out of place in comparison.

As Sara gets led around the area, she finds she can appreciate people not bothering enough with her to care. It feels like a weight she didn’t know was there gets lifted off her chest. She can breathe again and this time, the salt in the air is more than welcome.

She barely notices it when a hand slips into hers before sharply tugging her back.

The action is so sudden that Sara doesn’t get a chance to think before she’s simply hurled into the other woman. They’ve manage to avoid cracking heads because there’s a significant height difference between them, which makes Sara completely confused as to why she’s staring at an awkwardly contorted face that seems awfully like it’s failing to fight back a wince.

_“Đừng –”_

And Sara doesn’t even let her finish because this has to be hurt something fierce if even she can’t hold it in. Her hands are already reaching for the hem of her shirt and she’s certainly getting glared at right now, but Sara can’t find it in herself to care that much about that when she’s barely uncovered an inch of skin and there’s already pitch black bruising revealed.

All the air in her lungs that she’s just managed to get in there leaves Sara in an instant, the rest of the shirt lifting all the way up and over her head to show an even worse sight than Sara initially imagined. The skin on the right side of her body doesn’t even look like skin anymore because it’s so badly mangled, angry gashes of vibrant red the only thing that stands out against all the black. This is something she shouldn’t have tried to take care of herself, let alone keep it hidden from Sara for whatever dumb reasons she could possibly have for doing so.

She needs a god damn hospital and there’s surely not one around for god knows how many miles and Sara is so completely _pissed_ at her, it’s just when she tries to tell her as much her mouth works but nothing comes out of it.

At first, she thinks it’s because she’s so mad that she can’t even find a place to begin. When Sara comes up empty, she realizes that as mad as she is at this asshole for not telling her about it, Sara is ten times madder at herself for not being able to notice something so glaring as this. It’s not like this is something so negligible that it can easily slip through the cracks – no, this is like Sara tripped into the Grand Canyon and didn’t notice the free falling.

Sara racks her brain for any time during these last days when she was less than a hundred percent, only managing to frustrate herself even more when she comes up empty handed. If she just asked, she thinks, she could have done something about this sooner. Hell, if she did anything at all other than just accept everything being done for her, they could have avoided this escalating so badly.

The decision to resolutely ignore the obvious fact that this still would have happened even if she managed to move heaven and hell in order to find out is a conscious one.

 

It takes three different healers, a week and a half, and five sets of crooked stitches before her skin starts to show signs of regaining its natural color. The injured area is in no way healed, not in any sense of the word, though it’s finally starts to look like less of a helpless cause as each day goes by.

Sara continues to not talk to her, aside from the few words she needs to clean and redress the wounds.

For the most part, they don’t need always words to communicate and she’s never been more grateful for that than she is now. There’s part of her that wants to say something but she’s afraid that if she does, it’ll be like opening a dam to a very angry river and she’ll say things she doesn’t mean just to make it hurt like she always did before. That was a different time and Sara is a different person and she refuses to give herself the opportunity to revert.

It’s not until most of the black lightens to a distinguishable dark purple that Sara finds her voice; a soft ‘ _idiot_ ’ is offered when Sara has finished wrapping the bandages and she’s pulling her shirt back on. She blinks at Sara for a while, probably trying to figure out how to respond. Sara’s pretty certain she’s never been out rightly called an idiot, least not to her face, and she can practically hear her head thinking from where she’s sitting.

She lets her squirm at first, gives herself a chance to revel in the one time she’s managed to make her at a loss for words. When it appears like she’s about to answer, Sara effectively cuts her off again by getting up from where they’re sitting and heading for the door.

If Sara is to be perfectly honest, she doesn’t want to hear whatever is going to come out of her mouth and she still isn’t completely confident in her ability to keep her cool if they do manage to talk.

– and to her credit, she lets Sara walk out without a fight.

 

They get over this exactly three weeks later, once the stitches are no longer needed.

She comes to her one night where the wind is howling outside from a storm that’s fairly uncommon in these parts, the rain constantly beating against the place they’ve been calling home. Between all of that and the waves crashing in the distance with gusto, Sara barely notices her at all but there’s something in her that feels her, nonetheless.

All of the self-control she possesses fights back the urge to reach out to her.

This is something she has to learn, something she has to realize because she can’t keep pulling shit like this, not when Sara is _right here_.

Amidst the waiting, she gets lost in the oddly calming effect all the noises that are currently thrown together offer until she feels the bed shift and dip under more weight. A nudge at the hand that’s resting on her stomach piques the beginning of Sara’s attention; the small kiss dropped there is what secures the rest.

She manages to feel light and heavy at the same time. The gestures she’s granted right now so light and soft that they could be mistaken for nothing. At the same time, that’s what makes them mean so much because they don’t have to be this way but this is what she always chooses when it comes to Sara.

_“Xin lỗi.”_

The words leave her as a part of the breath she exhales into Sara, like they’re easy to say but she’s been around for long enough to know that this is the only way she can offer them so freely. It’s the only way she knows to give Sara something without asking for anything in return.

Even when she floods all of her senses, Sara keeps this secret to herself, the irony of being ridiculously angry in the first place over the very same thing not lost on her in the least bit.

It’s because she’s afraid to let it be vulnerable enough to be taken away like everything else that’s meant something in her many lifetimes. She cares enough this time around to protect it, hold it close and not let anyone touch it – even _her_.

 

(it creeps into the very depths of what soul she has left and won’t let go

if these words come naturally to her they will only ever be for her to hear, sacred in a way nothing else is because nothing has the ability to make her feel the way she does by simply being

she’s frightened just as much as she’s enraptured

her beginning and her end stare back at her and she wants nothing more than to spend the rest of eternity looking right into those eyes that she thinks would be worth damning the whole world for, if it ever came to that

with her the words keep slipping freely off her tongue before she can stop them, desperate to prove something hidden too deep to the one they belong)


End file.
